A New Moment For Leadership

Leadership is a difficult word to define. This is true, in part, because of the wide variety of behaviors and values that are attached to the term. Often times, a person who holds an office of influence or power is referred to as a leader, without any more of a definition provided.

It is common to look to people who wield influence, or do something innovative, or hold power over a group of people and conclude that whatever characteristics, behaviors and habits they display are the very things that make leadership, leadership.

Success wielding power or influence, or achieving a task before others are able to do so, is enough to give that same person the social credibility and authority to define leadership to society. Success is seen as equal to leadership.

Particularly in the main stream of Western societies, success in an endeavor is attributed to a person or group’s ability to dominate their opponents, manipulate their circumstances, and control their futures.

Complicating matters is the fact that recognizing success is made more difficult by ever-more sophisticated ways to manufacture social credibility. Publishers look for marketable authors with existing platforms rather than original ideas. Voters look to social media for information on issues and candidates (easily manipulated through platform trends, SEO, and bots) rather than engage in thoughtful dialogue with community members. Researchers and nonprofits increasingly are judged on their ability to attract and obtain private funding rather than their pursuit of the ideals of their endeavors.

Even as we recognize the power of “spin” on our perception of reality, we accept the standards that these market forces suggest we adopt. And worse, we begin to judge the leaders we hope to guide us out of these practices by the very standards we aspire to escape.

Popular concepts of leadership, as described and taught in many of the most influential outlets and accessible formats (think of the management section at Barnes & Noble or higher education’s average MBA program), are animated by values of domination, control, and manipulation. These values are antithetical to social and environmental justice.

I believe we're in a new moment for leadership. Do you agree?

In far too many cases, the tools of these popular approaches guide leadership for social change, with the result of recreating “leaders” who seek to dominate, control, and manipulate the people they claim to care for. In the most offensive circumstances, the very values of social justice are weaponized for private gain.

We are entering a new moment for leadership that must facilitate greater integrity between the animating values, daily practices, and future social aspirations of social and environmental justice. Authenticity, in the age of targeted messaging and honed branding, is more important than ever.

In other words, social and environmental justice cannot be accomplished or measured by the vision, best practices, and ethical standards of popular management and leadership approaches. The ability of brand recognition and targeted marketing to manipulate the public perception of respectability and efficacy means that we who long for justice must recalibrate our abilities to judge the authenticity and potential of all visions for transformation.

We are truly in a new moment for leadership when it comes to creation of a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world. The credibility of an approach to social change must be established by something more than its ability to go viral or inspire buzz. And, we have to anticipate that the tools we create for discernment today have the potential to become tomorrow’s tools of manipulation and marketing.

Looking Bear Leadership aspires to facilitate this process of discernment and search for authentic, life-giving ways of life together. And we make this attempt with an expectation that those we seek to inspire will hold us to the same standards we hope to embody – an invitation to scrutiny we don’t take lightly.

We offer to our companions the same thing we seek: patience and mutual trust in the journey toward justice; commitment to our ideals through depth and intimacy in relationships; and, reason for hope in the face of daunting circumstances. These are at the heart of Transformative Community Leadership, and the defining principles of Looking Bear Leadership.

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